Saturday, January 29, 2011

Well its a really hot 39 degrees celsius in Adelaide today, so it's a very good time for sitting under the air conditioner and doing some thinking.

The subject of today's post has been at the back of my mind for several weeks now. I wanted to compare the conclusions reached about UFOs by the Australian, United Kingdom and New Zealand Defence Intelligence areas of their respective Defence Forces. This line of thinking all started when I re-read some material on the Disclosure Australia (DA) website (http://disclosureaustralia.freewebpages.org )

Australian considerations:

The DA website contains a paper by my co-blogger, Keith Basterfield, titled "Scientific Intelligence and the UFO question in Australia" written in 2008. A two year correspondence between Keith and the Minister for Defence, resulted in the release of a formerly "secret" file. This file was titled "Scientific Intelligence - General - Unidentified Flying Objects" and is available from the National Archives of Australia, being file series JIO63, control symbol 3092/2/000, date range 1957-1971.

The file was held by the Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) which later became the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO,) within the Australian Department of Defence (DOD.) It is currently called the Defence Intelligence Organisation (DIO.)This agency, whatever its name has been the main intelligence area of the DOD.

The role of the JIB/JIO was to collect, collate, analyse and distribute within the government, information relating to defence intelligence, i.e. strategic political, military, economic and scientific, about other countries.

What was the JIB/JIO take on UFOs?

The following is taken from papers on the formerly "secret" file. Mathams, DSTI replied to the DD(C) on 2 February 1970:

"...my views on the subject of UFOs, from a scientific point of view , are as follows:(a) The present establishment of DSTI...no surplus research capacity within the establishment that could be diverted to problems such as the investigation of UFO reports.(b) I am not convinced that there is a sufficient scientific intelligence component in the UFO problem, such as to warrant any diversion of Australia's very limited resources for scientific intelligence research..."

On 3 February 1970 the DD(C)McMichael, wrote to DSTI:

"I am sure that there is an area of investigation that should be pursued by some authority...I have considered carefully whether a part of the subject might be undertaken by us, but this approach doesn't seem practicable..."

On 27 March 1971 the Director JIO R W Furlonger, wrote to the Deputy Secretary B:

"There appears to be sufficient evidence from RAAF and US reports of investigations of UFO sightings to indicate that some reports cannot readily be explained by natural phenomena or man-made activities..."

To sum it up, the Australian DOD defence intelligence area said that there was some merit in the UFO phenomenon that should be investigated by someone, but it wouldn't be them.

Elsewhere, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) a part of the DOD were officially charged with investigating Australian UFO reports (which they referred to as Unusual Aerial Sightings UAS) stated time after time in their files that their task was to assess UFO reports for any possible threat to Australian national security.

After investigating UFO reports from at least the early 1950's to 1984, on 2 May 1984 the DOD announced:

"The RAAF in future will investigate fully only those Unusual Aerial Sightings (UAS) which suggest a defence or national security implication."

In 1994 the DOD went further:

"Consideration of the scientific record suggests that, whilst not all UAS have a ready explanation, here is no compelling reasons for the RAAF to continue to devote resources...The RAAF no longer accepts reports on UAS..."

With that announcement, the Australian government officially closed any UFO investigations.

In summary, in 1971 the Defence Intelligence area of the Australian DOD recognised that there some unexplainable UFO reports, and in 1994 the DOD agreed that not all UAS reports had a ready explanation, the official Australian government UFO agency, the RAAF closed its doors on the phenomenon. UFOs might be scientifically interesting but they were no defence threat.

United Kingdom considerations:

The UK's Ministry of Defence (MOD) Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence (DSTI) studied UFO reports for years.

Dr David Clarke and Andy Roberts in their 2002 book titled "Out of the Shadows" documented DSTI's involvement.

In 1967, the Deputy Director of Intelligence wrote:

"In our case we have tailored our efforts to meet the minimum requirement of protecting UK airspace from any incursions which might pose a threat or a hazard." (p179.)

By 2001 DSTI ceased reviewing UFO reports made to the MOD, as it had been determined that UFOs were of no defence interest.

However, a formerly "secret" study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) was conducted in the late 1990s by a consultant hired by the Defence Intelligence area of the MOD. The study was later released to the public. Titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region: Scientific and Technical Memorandum - No 55/2/00."

The terms of reference of the study as indicated in the aims was "The aim of this task is to determine the potential value, if any, of UAP sighting reports to defence intelligence."

Page 4 of the Executive Summary adds "Consistent with MOD policy, the available data has therefore been studied principally to ascertain whether there is any evidence of a threat to the UK."

Page 6 of the same summary stated:

"Based on all the available evidence remaining in the Department (reported over the last 30 years), the information studied, either separately or corporately contained in UAP reports, leads to the conclusion that it does not have any significant Defence Intelligence value. However, the study has uncovered a number of technological issues that may be of potential defence interest..."

"No evidence exists to associate the phenomenon with any particular nation."

"No evidence exists to suggest that the phenomenon seen are hostile or under any type of control, other than that of natural physical forces."

Key supporting findings included:

"Aerial phenomena of the type consistent with those reported as UAP, and with exceptional characteristics, certainly exist - but the available evidence suggests, that apart from those which can be more easily and satisfactorily explained, they are comprised of several types of rarely encountered natural events within the atmosphere and ionosphere. Some of them are still barely understood."

My summary of the UK's Defence Intelligence area's thoughts, is that UFOs certainly exist. Some are scientifically interesting, but there are no significant defence threats.

New Zealand considerations:

File 244/10/1 of the New Zealand Defence Force, recently released by the New Zealand government has a memo on it dated 4 November 1976 from Secretary for Transport to Secretary of Defence (Ref Def66/20/1 DDI.) Included is the statement:

"I agree that there seems to be no need to have a committee to investigate reported sightings of UFOs...As we have no interest other than to ensure...eliminate the possibility of an unknown intruder..."

This memo was a response to the Defence Intelligence area of the NZ Defence Force's query as to whether or not the NZ "Unidentified Flying Object Investigation Committee" should continue. The DDI chaired this committee.

Also on file 244/10/1 the official New Zealand government position on UFOs was stated in a memo dated 5 October 1976 from the Secretary of Defence." All I can say is that empirical evidence shows conclusively that there are no defence factors involved with UFO sightings."

An earlier memo, dated 8 August 1972 from the Minister of Defence stated:

"...the overall subject does appear to be primarily a matter of scientific interest than defence..."

In short, UFOs are scientifically of interest, but no defence threat to New Zealand.

Comments:

Dear readers, do you see a pattern here? Australian, New Zealand and the United Kingdom's Defence Intelligence areas have studied UFO reports for years. They state in summary that some UFOs are not explainable in conventional terms; that they are scientifically interesting but are of no defence threat.

There would seem to be value for researchers to take a look at the conclusions of other global governments to see what their take on the UFO phenomenon has been.

As you will know from reading this blog, one of my current research projects is looking at old Australian cases. In this post I investigate an event which occurred in 1947 in my home state, several months before the Kenneth Arnold sighting.

I had known about this event for several years, ever since an Adelaide contact, Darryl Tiggeman, supplied me with details. I visited the State Library in Adelaide and confirmed that the following accounts did appear in the papers of the time.

"While working in the yard at the Commonwealth Railways workshop yesterday morning Mr Ron Ellis and two workmates claim to have seen five strange objects in formation pass across the sky from north to south.

"The objects were white or light pink and shaped like an egg. Mr Ellis said that he could not give an accurate estimate of the size of the objects, but they were casting shadows and judging by his experience with aircraft in the RAAF during the war he considered they were about the size of a locomotive.

"Although the objects kept on a direct course at a height of about 6,000 feet they appeared to be quivering he said. Owing to their great speed they were out of sight within a few seconds.

"Any question of the phenomenon being an optical illusion was dispelled by the fact that a few minutes later both Mr Ellis and his companion gave an identical description of what they had seen. Their description was verified by another member of the workshop who said he had also seen the objects."

Source: "Adelaide Advertiser" newspaper. Friday 7 February 1947, front page. Viewed in the State Library, Adelaide on 27 January 2011.

(2) "Objects in sky not meteorites."

"Commenting yesterday on a report from Port Augusta that several men working in the yard at the Commonwealth Railways workshop at about 9am on Wednesday had seen five strange egg shaped objects in formation pass across the sky at a height of about 6,000 feet the Government astronomer (Mr G F Dodwell) said that the phenomenon did not fit in with anything astronomical and was a complete mystery to him.

"Mr Dodwell discounted the probability of the objects being meteorites. He said that meteorites being so small and travelling at such high speeds did not cast shadows whereas the report stated that the objects had cast shadows about the size of a locomotive. The presence of falling meteorites would have been accompanied by a deafening roar."

Source: "Adelaide Advertiser" newspaper. Saturday 8 February 1947, front page. Viewed in the State Library, Adelaide on 27 January 2011.

Research:1. I visited the State Library, Adelaide and confirmed that the above accounts had appeared in the respective newspapers. They had.

2. I then searched for additional information about the event. I checked other newspapers. The "Adelaide Advertiser" between 1 and 19 February; the "West Coast Sentinel" (based at Streaky Bay 320km W of Port Augusta) between 5 and 19 February; "The Recorder" (based at Port Pirie 80kms S of Port Augusta) between 7 and 14 February; Adelaide's other daily newspaper "The News" between 5 and 11 February; the Adelaide weekly "The Mail" for 8 February; and "The Quorn Mercury" (based at Quorn 22kms NE of Port Augusta) between 6 and 20 February.

3. I found that "The Quorn Mercury" of 13 February 1947, page 3, carried the exact same story as the 8 February 1947 "Adelaide Advertiser" quoted above. Interestingly, "The Quorn Mercury" of 20 February 1947, page 3, also carried an additional sighting.

"Writing in the Advertiser, Mr F W Flavel of Lock, Eyre Peninsula states: "I saw objects in the sky between 7 and 8 o'clock the same day as you record a report from Port Augusta. I was walking in a north-westerly direction to the house after feeding the pigs.

"There were five of the strange objects and they seemed to be coming up out of the sea like a shadow with smoky greyish color around them. They were oblong with narrow points. I saw them quite plainly. They seemed to be floating in the air from north-west to south-east and caused a shadow."

4. I then checked the "Adelaide Advertiser" and found a letter to the editor in the 17 February 1947 edition, page 2.

"Strange objects in the sky."

"I saw objects in the sky between 7 and 8 o'clock the same day as you record a report from Port Augusta. I was walking in a north-westerly direction to the house after feeding the pigs.

"There were five of the strange objects and they seemed to be coming up out of the sea like a shadow with smoky greyish color around them. They were oblong with narrow points. I saw them quite plainly. They seemed to be floating in the air from north-west to south-east and caused a shadow."

"I called the wife to have a look at them and she did so. It was a sight. I wish I had watched them longer as others had seen them and Port Augusta men did so an hour later. I have never seen anything like this before, and after reading what others saw I thought I would let you know that my wife and I both saw these objects."

5. I checked the weather forecast for Wednesday 5 February 1947. The state forecast was "Unsettled, with scattered rain and thunderstorms. Cool on part of the coast, elsewhere warm to hot and sultry. SE to NE winds. " The weather chart was shaded over Port Augusta indicating that rain was expected that day.

Sunrise was at 0539hrs. Moonrise 1925hrs. Full moon was 6 December 1947.

7. As it was mentioned that Port Augusta witness Ron Ellis had been in the RAAF, I checked for service records for such a person in the National Archives of Australia. I found there was a Ronald Ernest Ellis, born 5 November 1920 in Port August. This is most likely the same person.

I checked for records for an F W Flavel, the Lock witness' name but found nothing.

Comments:1. The fact that there are two separate reported observations on the same morning of five strange objects in the sky which cast shadows, would indicate the observations were of the same set of objects.

2. Based on the information given, I cannot see a mundane explanation for the observations.

3. Note that this was about four months before the US based Kenneth Arnold sighting which started the "modern" UFO phenomenon.

Monday, January 24, 2011

I'm still on holidays at the moment. I'm sitting outside on a predicted 28 degree C maximum day; with a glass of "Moscato" white wine from Banrock Station; a box of "Mint Thins" peppermint chocolates and Leslie Kean's new book, "UFOs." I think I'm in heaven!

The book is "UFOs:Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record," published by Harmony Books. New York. 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-71684-2. (See website here.)

The author:

Leslie Kean is an investigative journalist, widely published in a variety of mainstream media publications, and co-founder of the Coalition for Freedom of Information (click here for more information)

The foreword:

John Podesta (more info click here)has been "...counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the White House under President Clinton, and now with the Center for American progress, to the fundamental principle of protecting openness in government..." he writes:

"The time to pull the curtain back on this subject is long overdue...about a fascinating phenomenon, the nature of which is yet to be determined...it is definitely time for governments, scientists, and aviation experts to work together in unravelling the questions about UFOs..."

Kean's interest commences:

In the year 2000, Kean was working for a Californian public radio station when she obtained a copy of the French COMETA report (click here.)This was a report authored by a group of "...retired generals, scientists and space experts...explained that about 5 percent of sightings...cannot be easily attributed to earthly sources...This 5 percent seem to be "completely unknown flying machines with exceptional performances that are guided by a natural or artificial intelligence." (p.1.)

Kean's interest started after reading this report and "I kept wondering, could there really be technological objects flying around that are not man-made?...As I dug deeper I learned that these objects had appeared for decades..." (p.3.)

Kean's response was "Secretly, I started to look into the UFO subject more extensively...The UFO story was journalistically elusive, contaminated by conspiracy theories, disinformation and just plain sloppiness...The aggregate data, the accumulation of evidence over decades, was utterly compelling and completely mystifying...UFOs became the focus of my professional life..." (pp3-4.)

"I naively thought this would have to generate some kind of news buzz...Amazingly, nothing happened...It was as if everyone was pretending that they didn't exist..." (p.5.)

Despite this, Kean continued her interest, learning more and interviewing some of the key players in the field. Interestingly, "The most credible sources clearly recognised, and stated repeatedly, that we don't yet know what the objects are-contrary to public assumption that UFOs, by definition, are extraterrestrial spaceships." (p.6.)

"I now believe that the only way to adequately convey the full story-to really break the news about the existence of UFOs and convey the impact of the material for the person so far unexposed to it-is through a book such as this one..." (p.6.)

"Our government still stays out of the UFO controversy and has no policy in place to address growing concerns..." (p.9.)

Kean then puts forward five "premises" for the reader to consider as they read the rest of the book:

"1)There exists in our skies, worldwide, a solid, physical phenomenon that appears to be under intelligent control and is capable of speeds, maneuverability and luminosity beyond current known technology.(2) UFO incursions, often in restricted airspace, can cause aviation safety hazards and raise national security concerns, even though the objects have not demonstrated overtly hostile acts.(3) The U.S. Government routinely ignores UFOs and, when pressed, issue false explanations. Its indifference and/or dismissals are irresponsible, disrespectful to credible, often expert witnesses, and potentially dangerous.(4) The hypothesis that UFOs are of extraterrestrial or interdimensional origin is a rational one, and must be taken into account, given the data we have. However, the actual origin and nature of UFOs have not yet been determined by scientists and remain unknown.(5) Given its potential implications, the evidence calls for systematic scientific investigation involving US government support and international cooperation." (pp13-14.)

Part one:

Most of the book is taken up by contributions by a range of individuals, e.g. chapter two relates the wave over Belgium,written by Major general Wilfried De Brouwer (retired); "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Aviation Safety" by Richard F Haines; the 18/19 September 1976, Iranian aircraft encounter by one of the pilots involved, General Parviz Jafari (retd.); Peruvian Air Force pilot Commandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas (retd.) on his 11 April 1980 encounter, and so on.

Part two:

Part two opens with Kean's analysis of the period 1947-1969 in an American context; and a look at what other countries have undertaken in terms of research. "Since 2004, the governments of Brazil, Chile, France, Mexico, Russia, Uruguay, Peru, Ireland, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom have release once secret files and in 2009 even Denmark and Sweden joined the trend..." (p.117.)

However, Kean notes that despite this, "...government documents no longer reveal anything new and the thousands and thousands of pages have not lead to a major breakthrough in understanding. The most sensitive files-the intelligence reports that are concerned with more serious national security implications and likely deeper investigations and analysis-will not be disclosed and released." (p.118.)

The next portion of the book looks at what processes other world governments have taken and what they have learned.

Chapter 13 by Major General Denis Letty (retd.) reveals the background to the COMETA report and Jean-Jacques Velasco speaks to the French studies, in chapter 14.

Kean then discusses UFOs and the National Security Problem. This is spoken by a chapter by Nick Pope, who worked for the UK Ministry of Defence; a review of the UK Rendelsham Forest affair by Seargent James Penniston (Rtd.) and Colonel Charles I Halt (Retd.); while General Ricardo Bermudez Sanhueza (Retd.) reviews the Chilean response and Brigadier General Jose Carlos Pereira (Retd.) covers that of Brazil's response.

Part three:

"Even after many decades of focused research in France, explanation of defense implications in the UK, and field investigations in the Brazilian Amazon...we still don't know what the objects actually are..." (p.209.)

After interviewing a range of high-level individuals, Kean looks to move the debate on and suggest three points "...that further scientific investigation is mandated, partly because of the impact of UFOs on aircraft and aviation safety...that this investigation must be an international cooperative venture involving many governments and transcending politics...that such a global effort cannot be effective without the participation of the United States, the world's greatest technological power." (pp210-211.)

Kean's key point is "Logically, the first step in moving toward a solution is the establishment of an office or small agency within the US government to handle appropriate UFO investigations, liaison with other countries, and demonstrate to the scientific community that this is indeed a subject worthy of study." (p.211.)

Later chapters discuss "Government cover-up:Policy or myth?"; "Governor Fife Symington and Movement Towards Change"; Kean's own efforts with the Coalition for Freedom of Information.

The final chapter, "Facing an Extreme Challenge" reviews possible reasons why politicians and scientists look to avoid the subject of UFOs.

Kean's hope is that "With the launching of a new U.S. Government agency and the liberation of new resources, science could take its rightful place in the study of UFOs by claiming the subject as its own and beginning a new inquiry." (p288.)

Comments:

This is a very powerful book, especially the thought provoking first hand accounts by those who have experienced the phenomenon. It provides a slice of the available evidence (staying clear of the quagmire of the abduction phenomenon)which is available through numerous previous studies, the files released by various governments and those held by private UFO research groups.

The call for action is commendable, and her suggestion for the formation of a new US based office or agency to move the subject forward is excellent.

It certainly reminded me that UFOs do exist; that we still don't know what they are; that Defence Intelligence areas of various governments have concluded there is no defence significance; and that further research is indeed warranted.

Buy several copies of this book.One to keep and the others to be shared with people you know who don't think the subject is worthy of attention.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

One of my current research projects is looking at contactee/abductee accounts (the other is researching Australian UFO "cold cases.") When I read in a recent post by Pauline on this blog, that in May 1978 Dr Christopher (Kit) Green was visiting Houston "...where Valerie Ransone and a group of contactees have promised he would witness materializations..." I became intrigued and decided to undertake a little research on Valerie Ransone.

Why would I be interested in a 1970's contactee case?

(1) It was many years ahead of the Internet which clouded the issue with an overload of material.
(2) Unlike many other contactee cases, it involved some high profile people, e.g. US astronaut Gordon Cooper.
(3) The contactee herself was said to be high profile, although until I conducted this research I can't say that I had heard of her.

"The day began with breakfast, early for the locals but late for the visitors, at the Furama with Chun Kam Fong, Five-O's super sleauth, Chin Ho, who is as celebrated here as MacArthur.

"Other members of the party included MacArthur's friend, the lovely Valerie Ransone, former CBS correspondent and Washington power broker, who was putting together the Far Eastern Links in a new alternative radio service, The Information Network, of which she is President, principal shareholder, chief correspondent and board chairman. It also included the Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es ( see piece in New York Times KB) who speaks American English with the tones of a Five-O villain...It had been noticed that during the run from the jewellers, Valerie was limping. Unlikely as it sounds for such a beautiful and healthy young lady, she seemed to be suffering from the gout."

The MacArthur in the piece was James MacArthur, the actor in Hawaii-Five-O, a police drama set in Hawaii.

Enter Jacques Vallee:
I next picked up the story in Jacques Vallee's book "Forbidden Science Volume Two" where I located six diary entries between 19 May and 14 October 1978.

19 May 1978
"Upon my return from Los Angeles I met with Ira Einhorn at his hotel. We spent several hours discussing Bob Beck, Puharich and Valerie Ransone, a contactee who has worked in Washington for Nixon's WIN (anti-inflation) campaign. She is active in high-level circles, organising trips to the desert in hopes of watching UFOs.

" Confirming what I'd heard from Kit, Ira told me that Valerie and Puharich had gone over to see Beck in March or April 1977. Beck claims he can take his ELF generator to a coffee shop, turn on the device and cause every child in the place to start crying; conversely he'll tune it to a frequency that includes euphoria...

"Some German executives are said to have a device that shields a person against such waves. In a letter to Ira, Beck writes that 'competent authorities' have asked him not to reveal the frequency in question."

11 June 1978
"Valerie Ransone is setting up a company to disseminate messages she believes to be of extraterrestrial origin. Since networks are now at the cutting edge of information sciences, she's also building up a Center for Advanced Technology that plans to use conferencing. The whole thing is reportedly financed by Security Around the Globe, an industrial protection and private detective firm.

"Valerie is an attractive 28-year old woman with a brilliant mind. She's being helped by high-powered executives, captains of industry, impeccable business leaders she calls her "silver foxes." One of them arranged for her to meet the director of the Scripps Institute and Gordon Cooper, who's made curious statements lately about witnessing the retrieval of crashed saucers. She's also in touch with a fellow who owns a lot of real estate in San Francisco,

"Journalist West Thomas who heads up Valerie's computing center, has called from her office to enlist my help. Valerie got on the line to assure me of the seriousness of her project. I declined to become involved, bothered by all their pseudo-science."

9 July 1978
"Wes Thomas was waiting for me at Kennedy. He spoke about Valerie. He';s known her for several years, having met her when she was the public relations person for an energy information group. Her family came from the Chicago area and she studied journalism at Northwestern. Wes introduced her to Puharich two years ago. She spent several months with him, exploring every site where ELF research was going on. This particular topic of extremely low frequency seemed to fascinate her. "I think Puharich convinced her that she was a contactee," said Wes. "I'd never heard her mention it before she met him.""

12 July 1978
Kit was waiting for me at Dulles, driving a Volvo full of kids, so we were not able to talk seriously until after dinner. Once we were alone I brought up my concerns. "It's obvious there's a secret project somewhere," I insisted. "Take a case like Tehran...someone must be working on it, even if you guys don't. Also, I've been thinking about our discussion with Jim Irish. He evaded all our questions about the death of his colleagues on Mount Baldy, didn't he?

'You may be right," Kit finally said, "about a secret project."

"What about Security Around the Globe? Where does Valerie come into all this?"

"SAG is owned by a lady and her two sons. They've had a private detective agency in Nevada for 15 years. She has lots of contacts."

6 August 1978
"On Friday I set up a computer conference with Valerie Ransone in Houston, Wes Thomas on Long Island and Brendan O'Regan in San Fancisco. It took a curious turn when Valerie announced that her purpose was to select 13 individuals who would be invited to her "Signs of the Spirit" conference in Washington next December. She said "My goal is to establish a foundation for those who will meet space people in December." I reminded her that two years ago Puharich had already predicted massive landings "within 18 months." Later on he revealed that "The Direction" had decided to land invisibly! Always the same absurd stories."

14 October 1978
"The Valerie Ransone saga continued. The woman who owns Security Around the Globe"" became intrigued and upset when she saw the folders Valerie brought to her for safekeeping, like "Soviet Research" and "Military intelligence." So she called the Houston office of the FBI, who went through the papers. They initiated an investigation that reached into every corner of Washington.

"Among the papers in question was a letter claiming that Earth was now under control of the aliens...On Wednesday evening I had a cup of coffee with Valerie at the Capitol Hilton. She was with Jill Duvall, a level-headed woman. They've opened an office in Washington, and their "Information network" is now registered as a Californian company thanks to money invested by a friend of hers in California. Valerie told me the Aliens didn't want me to call my next book "Messengers of Deception." I answered, "Let's see how they will stop me."

Enter Gordon Cooper:
Vallee's reference to astronaut Gordon Cooper brought up two internet pieces. The first I found on James Oberg's website.

"There could be trouble with the space shuttle."
It was December 1978.

"What kind of trouble? I asked her [Valerie Ransone] over the phone. Valerie was at her office in Washington. I was at mine in California.

"Technical flaws," she said. "Something to do with the heating or cooling system. It's pretty sketchy."

"The warning had come during one of her 'transmissions.' She had no idea when they would arrive--the telepathic messages she believed were from extraterrestrial source of intelligence...She made a point always to document the details as soon as possible, usually typing up the complete messages.

"Four months after mentioning the vague possibility of a problem with the space shuttle, Valerie was in Los Angeles and came to my office. She was worried about new and more detailed information she had received. She showed me a single typewritten page of notes she'd made after receiving the transmission...The source of information professed to being concerned that the future of manned space travel not be jeopardised by such events.

" I'd been around Valerie long enough to find her knowledgeable and trustworthy, and I wasn't about to discount her transmissions. In addition her telepathic powers had been proved time and time again...I felt certain she was getting good information from somewhere: from where and whom I couldn't say for sure...I flew to Houston to see Bennett "Ben" James, and experienced engineer and supervisor in NASA's Flight Operations...I now told him it was possible that my business partner was in contact with "higher powers somewhere who may have better information than we do..." NASA engineers immediately went to work examining the space shuttle's cooling system,. looking at the detailed scenarios I laid out for them. They quickly identified and within days, fixed the potential problem with the cooling system-just as outlined in the transmissions I carried in my briefcase...Was I surprised that the cooling system fault existed? Not really. With Valerie Ransone, I had moved beyond surprise. But the experience gave me another shot of confidence that the source we were getting technological assistance from was for real."

The second reference was on the website for Bruce Henderson, who, on the cover of "Leap of Faith" is shown as co-author.

" In the late 1970's, Cooper unsuccessfully tried to launch a research company devoted to free worldwide energy transmissions using Nikola Tesla's discoveries, as well as advanced medical devices and other projects. His partner in this venture Valeries Ransone, claims top receive scientifically useful telepathic transmissions from extraterrestrial sources.

"The story gets weirder, as Cooper agrees to joining Ransone in the Arizona desert for a telepathically arranged rendezvous with a UFO. Joining them at this alleged meeting (which was cancelled) was Atlas missile aerospace engineer Dan Fry, who claims to have flown over Texas on board a UFO in 1950..."

My comments:
Are we any further along in understanding the Vallee quote about Kit green going to Houston to witness materializations? Henderson's quote re cooper agreeing to meet Valerie Ransone "in the Arizona desert for a telepathically arranged rendezvous with a UFO" might be a clue. Are the "materializations" referring to a "UFO materializing?"

Alternative views:
As with any area of knowledge there are alternative viewpoints and I came across a suggestion that "Were the "higher powers" mentioned by astronaut Gordon Cooper spies, feeding him information in a counter-intelligence scheme..." (See the website here.)

Before dismissing this suggestion out of hand, take a look at Nick Refern's book "Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction," referred in a post by Pauline on this blog on 25 April 2010.

Information timeline:
From the information gained we are able to compile the following information:

Appeal:
Has any reader come across any other information about Ransone? If so, please share.

The library system in my home state has one copy in its catalogue of "Leap of Faith," however, when I enquired about access I was informed the only copy was lost. If any reader has a copy, is the material from the book, accurately quoted above?

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The floods which have devastated parts of Queensland, Northern New South Wales and Victoria have also affected the south-east of my own state. After so many years of drought in parts of Australia, it is ironic to now be having floods. In Adelaide we have no problems with excess water. Turning to today's post.

Authors of the Impossible:

I am finally getting to the bottom of the pile of books by my bed. Today's post is about the book "Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred" written by Jeffrey J Kripal (click here for Amazon details.) It was published in late 2010 by The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-45386-6. My copy through special orders, Dymocks books, Adelaide.

The author:

According to the cover blurb, Kripal is "the J Newton Rayzor Professor in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in the USA. He is the author of several previous books, including "Easlen: America and the religion of No Religion" and "The Serpent's Gifts: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion."

Introduction:

While researching "...esoteric currents of American popular culture, particularly as these are narrated and illustrated in the superhero comic book..." Kripal found himself "...confronting the histories of Western esotericism, animal magnetism, psychical research, science fiction and the UFO phenomenon..." (pp5-6.)

Along the way he came across the works of Frederic Myers; Charles Fort; Jacques Vallee and Bertrand Meheust. However, he notes that "I have never once encountered another scholar mentioning,much less engaging, three of the four writers whom I came to admire so...My conclusion was a simple one. Myers, Fort, Vallee and Meheust are not part of the scholarly canon that has come to define what is possible to be reasonably thought and comparatively imagined in the professional study of religion." (pp6-7.) Kripal's new book sets out to remedy this situation.

Definitions:

Kripal defines the psychical "...as the sacred in transit from a traditional religious register into a modern scientific one." The paranormal as "...the sacred in transit from the religious and scientific registers, into a parascientific or "science mysticism" register." (p.9.)

The sacred is "...a particular structure of human consciousness that corresponds to a palpable presence, energy or power encountered in the environment." (p.9.)

Kripal then notes "Unlike the sacred, neither the psychical nor the paranormal has survived in any active form within the professional study of religion." (p.9.)

Four books:

The major part of this work is a series of four "books", namely:

* The Book as seance: Frederick Myers and the London Society for Psychical Research

* Scattering the seeds of a super-story: Charles Fort and the Fantastic Narrative of Western Occulture

* The future technology of folklore: Jacques Vallee and the UFO phenomenon

* Returning the human sciences to consciousness: Bertrand Meheust and the Sociology of the Impossible.

For each of the four "authors of the impossible" Kripal presents a review of their contributions to their respective subjects; then provides an analysis of their thinking.

As readers of this blog will be aware, I value highly the work of Jacques Vallee, so will use the "Book" on Vallee as an indicator of Kripal's observations on all four authors.

Vallee:

"When I first read Jacques Vallee, I knew immediately that I had found a writer who had something important to teach us about the history of Western esotericism, about the truths of traditional folklore, about the mysterious attraction of modern science fiction, and about the reality of paranormal phenomena..."(pp143-144.)

Kripal was impressed "...how he makes the impossible possible through the sophistication of his suspicions and the complex ways that his comparative investigations puts together the pieces and parts of his historical data in order to from a radically different picture-puzzle of things." (p.144.)

"He is thinking of something that is mythical and physical, spiritual and material at the same time." (p.146.)

Kripal reviews Vallee's early life, his interactions with Aime Michel; his work with Allen Hynek; and his development of the idea that UFOs cannot be studied without taking into account parallels with earlier reports of occult beings as described in "...folklore, magic, witchcraft, and religion..." (p.156.)

Vallee "...remains convinced that the UFO phenomenon will never be solved by the believers or the rationalists...he thinks that we have to reject the dogmatisms of both religion and science and confront the phenomenon on its own terms..." (p.158.)

Kripal takes us through the published works of Vallee. "Vallee's method here is quite interesting. He begins with the hypothesis that the absurd is meaningful, that the dilemma signals new thought, that we should be looking for the cracks or glitches in the stories in order to begin divining their latent messages...In my own terms, they are hermeneutical events that share in both the mythical and the physical." (p.162.)

Kripal summarises Vallee's approach as:

"What I read him reading in the history of folklore is a future technology projected, somehow back into our present...The future technology of folklore that Vallee is imagining here, in other words, is a technology that we may be using on ourselves to manipulate our own past, to control, as it were, our belief system and mythologies that lies well below the present political system or cultural fad of the day...It is precisely these religious systems that control our history for Vallee..." (pp173-174.)

In ending this "Book" on Vallee, Kripal notes "It should be patiently obvious by now that the models of reading and writing the history of religion that Jacques Vallee ascribes to are fundamentally esoteric ones..." (P.187.)

Kripal summarises what he sees as three Vallee "secrets." Firstly, the "gnosis of the future" where "Jacques Vallee thinks backwards, from the future to the present and then, like the rest of us, to the past." (p.187.)

Secondly, "the gnosis of multidimensionality...namely, the idea of multiple dimensional space-time and its implications for thinking about the history of religion..." (p.188.) "His journals, for example, are peppered with examples of tantalising precognitive dreams and remarkable synchronicities or what he calls "intersigns"..." (p.189.)

Thirdly, "the gnosis of the rosy cross," the Rosecrucian tradition which Vallee spent several years exploring, and which "...taught him the basic structure of esoteric thinking..." (p.192.)

In summarising Vallee's thinking, Kripal notes "...most of his own mystical experiences, which have involved intimations of the future, have inevitably come to him during writing..." (p.196.)

Kripal's own hypotheses:

Kripal reveals his own working hypothesis, similar to that of Meheust's. "The humanities have something important to offer the study of psychical and paranormal phenomena...By the humanities, I mean the study of consciousness encoded in culture..." (p.201.) "...psychical and paranormal phenomena have something important to offer the humanities..."P.201.)

"They provide us with some of the most suggestive evidence that consciousness and culture cannot be collapsed into one another but work together , in incredibly complex ways, to achieve different human potentials, different forms of reality, different (im)possibilities." (p.202.)

"My own intuitive sense is that paranormal phenomena are expressions of a deeper nondual reality that possesses both "mental" and "material" qualities that manifest according to the subjective or objective structure of an experience or experient." (p.257.)

Final comments:

This book is a very deep and complex work, which brought my own thinking back from specific UFO cases and theories, to a broader plane. Kripal certainly increased my understanding of where Vallee is coming from.

The book will not be for everyone, believers and sceptics take note. It is you, who should be reading this book.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Many UFO researchers conclude that the most likely explanation for the UFO phenomenon is that it is due to extraterrestrial visitors. If one accepts this hypothesis,then a logical part of this, is that there must be intelligent life out there in the cosmos, for it to be visiting us on Earth.

Some in mainstream science disagree about the intelligence part. One of the proponents of an alternative view is Dr Charlie Lineweaver. The magazine "Australasian Science" Volume 32, number 1, dated Jan/Feb 2011, pages 34-37 carries an article by Stephen Luntz titled "Is there intelligence out there?"

"Dr Charlie Lineweaver has presented a new take on the question of whether we are alone in the universe. He argues that the chance we will ever encounter an alien species with "human-like" intelligence is vanishingly small."

At one time, planets were thought to be rare, but now it is estimated that 10% of sun-like stars have planets.

In addition, as life started on Earth almost as soon as it was possible for it to do so, it is therefore argued that life in the universe would be common.

"Lineweaver, however, believes that it is not the conditions required for technologicl development that are lacking. Rather, there is no reason for intelligence to form-even under favourable conditions."

"Lineweaver calls this the Planet of the Apes hypothesis - the idea that if there is an intelligence niche that one or more species will eventually evolve to fill it."

"Lineweaver argues that the hypothesis doea not fit the evidence." Humans evolved in Africa, and although there were other places on Earth that we could have risen from, we did not. No where else on Earth did intelligent human life come to be.

Dr Harry Jerrison, a brain scientist, plotted encephalisation quotient versus time, on a graph. The graph indicated that brains became larger over time.

Lineweaver says "...this approach is simply looking at the world through human eyes...Lineweaver sees our enormous brains in similar terms, a freak occurrence that evolved just once..."

"Indeed, Lineweaver thinks that even if a trend toward intelligence was established among species on Earth there is no reason to believe it would be universal."

"The theory that it is human-like intelligence that is improbable, rather than life itself, resolves the apparent contradiction between Lineweaver's latest work and some of his earlier research."

Lineweaver says he is at one end of a spectrum of opinion. At the other end is Professor Simon Conway Morris who believes intelligence is inevitable and that vaguely humanoid creatures are out there.

In between, most astrobiologists say that given enough planets, intelligence will arise.

For those who think there are intelligent civilisations out there, Dr James Benson "concluded that most of the searches were being conducted in the wrong part of the radio spectrum." "It's possible intelligent civilisations are separated by very large distances."

Professor Malcolm Walter, an astrobiologist at the University of New South Wales suspects "that Lineweaver is broadly right in his conclusions. Most people working in the field would agree with the improbablity of finding industrial civilisations out there."

"Lineweaver thinks there is likely to be life on many planets....and himselef still believes that SETI has value..." However, "...he believes that SETI could turn out to be like Columbus: searching somewhere new based on a bad hypothesis but finding something of even greater value."

Monday, January 10, 2011

For UFOs to be extraterrestrial visitors, there must be habitable planets elsewhere in the universe for them to come from. Up until now there has been no evidence that such planets exist.

An article in the Australian Sky and Telescope magazine, volume 7 number 1, dated January 2011 (page 12) reports on the finding of the first "Potentially habitable" exoplanet.

Gliese 581 is a red-dwarf star in the constellation of Libra. It is 20 light years from Earth.

Exoplanet Gliese 581g is a world of 3-4 Earth masses, which orbits its sun at a distance which makes it have a temperature "for life as we know it." Its diameter is calculated to be 1.2 to 1.5 times Earth's and a surface gravity of 1.5 to 2 times Earth's.

""This is both an incremental and a monumental detection" said exoplanet specialist Sara Seager (MIT.)"

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Some in the UFO research community suggest that the answer to the core UFO phenomenon lies not with extraterrestrials, but with something far stranger.

The concept that there exists other universes, other than our own, has just received a boost.

In an article which appears in the "New Scientist" magazine, 20 Dec 2010/1 Jan 2011 joint issues 2792/2793, is the hypothesis that after the big bang there was a period of inflation in which our universe rapidly expanded in size on a massive scale. Perhaps, it suggests, other universes may inflate, due to inflation. So, collisions between universes might just occur, leaving evidence of this.

Stephen Feeney, of University College, London et al "...say they may have spotted such imprints in the cosmic microwave background..."

The Planck satellite, currently in orbit, may be able to detect other signs in the CMB, "such as a telltale signature in the orientation, or polarisation of CMB photons."

Oh, for more Sundays, when you can lie in for a while and not have to rush. Then off to my local library to browse the magazines area. While there, I found the December 2010 issue (FT268) of the English Fortean Times, which contained another in a series of articles by Jenny Randles.

Part four of the series "Life with the Aliens" commences with the account of "Graham" who wakes paralysed, and then with an "explosion of light" found himself "inside a room filled with bright, soothing light." "In a blink, he found himself sitting up wide-awake in bed."

Jenny poses the question, "How do we interpret something like this?" She mentions OBEs, NDEs and alien abduction experiences as contexts within which to consider the answer.

"The links between these supposedly divergent phenomena is obvious, in my opinion, and suggests that an NDE and an alien contact might simply be two sides of the same coin, the context and the disposition of the witness or investigator determining how they are pigeonholed."

Jenny then recounts the story of "Eileen Arnold" who, in 1942, looked up to see "...a large oval mass with light pouring from the sides." To Eileen, time stopped.

Later Eileen "...began to have intuitive experiences or visions of other realms." Messages poured in. Jenny "asked Eileen how real were these 'communications' and she confirmed my suspicion that they seemed hallucinatory..."

Jenny recalls her communication with American Kenneth Ring. "I argued that these alien contacts might be 'living daydreams,' technically a form of lucid dreaming."

"My suspicion is that alien contacts happen similarly, but not always during sleep. Instead, while awake, the subconscious mind takes control of the waking conscious landscape...transforming it into images that are then reported as a close encounter."

For those of you, who follow the "animal mutilation " aspects of the UFO phenomenon, you may be interested to read about a new Australian book, which covers sightings of "Big Cats" and the resultant animal damage attributed to them, in the latest post at:

"When Kit got back to his office after his stay in Texas he was annoyed to discover that the UFO files he had collected had been scattered by Agency attorneys in answer to FOIA requests. he had difficulty gathering them again. His boss called him on the carpet: "You're supposed to cover life sciences," he told him, "this stuff has nothing to do with it."

"The Agency allowed him to pursue the topic privately. He told me that something curious was happening in Mexico, with rumours of multiple UFOs seen on the ground and mysterious deaths of animals...Unfortunately we don;t have any real facts."

Comments:

Here then, is another indication that Green's interest in the UFO subject was personal rather than a mission of the CIA's.

21 January 1978

"Some of the theoretical papers I'd sent Kit have disappeared from his home study, just like Poher's photographs vanished from Bourret's apartment."

28 January 1978

"Kit and I met at Dulles airport on Thursday. Again we spent the evening arguing. I asked him what he thought of the Soviet psychotronic work..,"We began our first really serious analysis of Soviet parapsychology work about 1970," he said..."

29 January 1978

"A similar situation exists in Washington. Kit has been told that the Agency didn't have a mission to monitor the subject. His personal notes and files have been returned to him with instructions to take them home. Which brings us back to the big question: If those guys actually know nothing, who the hell is in charge?"

16 April 1978

"Some brave researchers are trying to extract UFO data from the government through the FOIA. "All they'll get is a lot of garbage," Kit told me. "The government no longer files anything under the UFO label. All personnel have been told to drop any research, direct or indirect, about the subject. I got mad at this. I told them they had no right to tell analysts what they could and couldn't, look at...what do you know about Wilbur Franklin?" Kit asked...The poor guy died last week in rather strange circumstances," he told me..."

"We spent the rest of the evening arguing about close encounters. When we spoke again the next morning after breakfast Kit told me he had spent most of the night reading my analyses.

"I've drawn a number of lessons from this," he said. "For me, all the physiological effects you describe appear to belong to the autonomous sympathetic nervous system which relates to the rhinencephalon in terms of smells and feelings of nausea. Those are tow features often noted by your witnesses."

"Does that lead you to look for psychiatric explanations, then?" I asked, already on the defensive. "Psychiatric explanations won't explain these cases you know."

"No, I've become skeptical about psychiatric hypotheses," he announced to my relief. "Psychiatric effects are present , but there may be a physiological cause that triggers them."

18 May 1978

"I finally took Kit over to Jim Irish's lab. As we drove through the L.A. traffic Kit told me about his meetings with Bob Beck, who researches brainwave entraining. I think beck managed to convince him that entraining was possible, but he remains skeptical of Bearden's notion that the Russians are using it as a weapon."

About Jim Irish. "I think the fellow is exactly who he says he is." Kit told me once we were back int he car, driving along Sunset. "He must have worked as a private contractor for ASA and later for NSA...I suspect NSA wanted to find out if it was possible to detect specific systems aboard satellites. If Jim Irish could pick them up with his Polaroid plates, it's likely the Russians do it to...We finally discussed cattle mutilations, which left him fairly stumped. Kit leans towards the theory that witches are responsible."

23 May 1978

"Kit is in close contact with most of the UFO groups, so his interest is only confidential among the uninformed. Right now he is on his way to Houston where Valerie Ransone and a group of contactees have promised he would witness materialization. But what are his true intentions? He belongs to a small cadre of very bright intelligence types who are looking for elements of truth...It is becoming obvious to both of us that some of the rumours about extraterrestrials have been planted, perhaps as a cover to esoteric weapons systems, or as part of psychological warfare exercises in which ufologists are a convenient test bed."

Comment:

"some of the rumours about extraterrestrials have been planted." It would be nice to know what hard evidence this is based on.

14 June 1978

"Evidently the CIA had a contact inside CUFOs, as it does among most UFO groups. Someone close to Allen in Chicago has leaked a pile of internal documents to Dave M. Another curious episode as soon as Dave got the CUFOS papers his secure phone rang: a Colonel requested to see them. Now Kit himself is wondering who could be watching them..."

12 July 1978

"Kit was waiting for me at Dulles, driving a Volvo full of kids, so we were not able to talk seriously until after dinner. Once we were alone I brought up my concerns..."You may be right," Kit finally said "about a secret project."

5 January 1979

"I've confronted kt with the fact that, according to the top-level Spanish officials I met in Mexico, the Spanish Air Force reported all their UFO data to "the Americans" - yet another indicator that a secret channel does exist. Kit denied knowledge of the sightings I recounted for him. He recently had the same conversation with John Schuessler, who thinks the secret project isn't at CIA but at NRO..."

5 March 1979

"I won' see Kit on this trip. Sadly, in spite of my admiration for his sharp intellect, there's a barrier between us. He's cleared for all kinds of secrets to which I share no access. It's pointless to talk, and I can't trust his bosses with my information."

8 October 1979

"In the meantime Kit has hired Rommell, a retired FBI agent charged with a formal study. H is spending his time and much CIA money in New Mexico."

22 November 1979

"Kit has come to the absurd conclusion that those mutilation reports that are not simply misinterpretations of predator actions are the product of schizophrenia in witnesses... I have cured myself of the fascination I once felt for the Intelligence Community."

Comments:

1. Volume two of Vallee's diaries ended in 1979. No more have yet been published.

2. I make no apologies for quoting at length, about Green, from Vallee's diaries. I think the entries do allow us to see Green and his thinking in the 1970's, and add to what has been published in the last few years.

"I plan to come home through El Paso where I'll meet with Dr Green, still in medical school. I expect we will argue again about the reality of UFOs and mutilations, both of which he keeps denying."

24 March 1977

"When I saw him in El Paso Kit was bothered by John Wilhelm, the Time Magazine journalist who wrote Search for Superman and is now hot on his trail. Kit has started to study cases of unexplained deaths and comas that have struck parapsychology researchers..." Click here for some of Wilhelm's work.

11 August 1977

"Kit and I spent two hours arguing yesterday at The Little Store in Woodside, closed for the afternoon. Alain gave us two Napoleons, a pot of coffee and left us alone. I proposed to attack the UFO system by moving upstream along its own feedback loop. I explained to kit how the topology of a control system worked and why we could try and affect it, even if we didn't yet know the nature of the actual agent (extraterrestrial, ultra-dimensional, collective unconscious, human manipulation etc..."

"Something bothered me about such conversations with kit. We speak past each other. I try to make him see the reality of the phenomenon, because he's one of the few people in a position to bring the subject up before decision-makers, but he continues to deny it, in academic terms that son';t take the facts into account."

Comments:

1. This entry provides me with the answer to a question which had been bothering me, why was Vallee spending so much time with Kit? The answer seems to be "because he's one of the few people in a position to bring the subject up before decision-makers."

2. I would love to know what exactly Vallee meant by "I proposed to attack the UFO system by moving upstream along its own feedback loop."

30 September 1977

"I spoke to Kit at Dulles. We ended up at the coffee shop of the Marriott, where we had once met with "Smith."

"Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?" I asked, "And his Group of Twelve?"

"We never found out why he wanted to know you, did we?" he said, evading me. I have my own idea that "Smith" wanted to make his own assessment, for whatever purpose. Kit was sceptical that NASA could study UFOs."

"They don't have the resources to do a good job," he argued. "They don't have the right psychologists, medical experts, analysts. We're the only ones with these resources,"

"What are you waiting for, then" I challenged him.

"We can't do it until the Executive tells us to study the problem."

"Yet Schneider had just told me he'd never trust the CIA to do a reliable study...I think Kit is a bright scientist with an open mind but he is the exception in a bureaucratic empire that smothers research. Even if he did know something, he couldn't use it, so what good is that?"

Comments:

"Schneider" refers to Stanley Schneider, assistant director of the Office of Scientific and Technology Policy under President carter. A colleague of Vallee's after meeting Schneider told Vallee that Robert Frosch, of NASA was planning to set up a UFO office. (p.393.)

17 November 1977

"Kit keeps explaining away the sightings by a combination of witness unreliability, fugue states, paraphrenia, or unspecified "anthropological" factors; none of which accounts for the hard core data. As for cattle mutilation cases, which may or may not be related to UFOs at all, he dismisses them as the simple work of predators."

In this post I will be continuing entries from Jacques Vallee's diaries about Green.

16 June 1974:

"Wearing a colorful shirt and a vibrant tie, Kit met me at Dulles last Friday in his little yellow sports car...Kit and I drove over to the Marriott to meet David M and "Sams," who was introduced to me as a member of the new "Group of twelve," which sounded exciting until we sat down in the bar area and I realised they were all space cadets, talking about pedestrian research worthy of the old NICAP.

"Sams is a 20-year veteran of the agency, manager of a project that flies "secret vehicles often confused with UFOs." A solid fellow with brown hair and thick glasses, he said i should write a proposal with him for an ambitious effort with a big budget, but he had no answers to my questions about scientific objectives...We went over to Kit's pleasant house int he woods where I met his cheerful wife and their two sons, who made me feel at home. We spent all of Friday evening arguing, all Of Saturday morning as well. I failed to convince him that UFOs were real."

Comments:

1. I don't recall coming across a 1974 Government study group before? Do any readers know of this?

2. I assume the quote about a project that flies secret vehicles is referring to either the U-2 or more likely the SR-71 aircraft. Click here for more on the SR-71.

3. One wonders what "Sams" thoughts were on his proposed project. What was he looking to achieve?

21 July 1974:

"Kit just left, along with Hal, Russell and two of his kids. We had a long discussion after a demo of my landing catalogue. Kit has dropped out of Sam's covert "Group of Twelve."

10 December 1974:

"Over lunch kit told me he'd been able to reconstruct all the data alluded to by Emenegger. "Everything checks out, but I can't find out if the Holloman movies actually exists."

"...Kit reluctantly confirmed there was a group of 15 engineers in the Midwest (I assumed it was McDonnell in St Louis) secretly doing UFO research for CIA under cover of "aeronautical research." They're getting data through leaks from CUFOs and other amateurs. I congratulated myself for working alone, keeping my own counsel."

Comments:

1. There was an alleged UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base. Click here for more.

"Kit came over for a long talk about Lopez Rega, the cults of California and my theories of control systems. He was flying up from Los Angeles where he'd met Sandler and was thrilled."

Comments:

1. "Lopez Rega." p264 states "A former law enforcement officer, Rega was succeeded in convincing his followers that subterranean ectoplasms were living under Buenos Aires and that he was in contact with them." It seems a strange topic for Green to be interested in, even if he was the CIA's "biological intelligence" area.

2. "Sandler" refers to Allan Sandler who was making a UFO documentary - see the link re the Holloman film, above.

23 March 1975

"A couple of weeks ago Kit met in Virginia with Russell in Hal's hotel room. They had started to discuss a case in which a mysterious mechanical arm appeared out of thin air int he bedroom of a Livermore engineer when the four of them suddenly heard a key turn in the door. Hal and Kit positioned themselves on either side and jumped on the intruder as soon as he pushed the door in, grabbing a little fellow with only one arm! The poor man swore he had been given the wrong key. They called the front desk. Indeed he had gone to the wrong room, but why did his key open Hal's door?"

26 April 1975

"Kit is now talking to every ufologist worth his salt. Last night he told me that the Holloman film that Sandler was trying so hard to locate had been withdrawn from the library by a Captain Harner who has since been transferred! But he can't find any trace of any Harner, or any such film at the Pentagon."

1 June 1975

"Over lunch Kit said that a friend of his recently attended a witchcraft session in San Francisco, where he actually saw the devil. Later he was shown a tiny pipe connected to the central cauldron. It gave off a gas which made the participants susceptible to suggestion...some of their adepts swear they have received communications from higher beings."

26 March 1975

An entry about animal mutilations. "From my own analysis, which runs contrary top Kit's conclusions, only a small number of cattle mutilations can be attributed to cults or predators."

Overall comments;

As can be seen from the above, Green was taking an interest in a broad range of topics, including UFOs.

Friday, January 7, 2011

In my last two posts I started to explore the UFO related work of American Christopher C (Kit) Green, who, while in the CIA between 1969 and 1985 spent some of his time researching the paranormal, including the subject of UFOs. It seems important to me to explore the work of someone who (apparently) started their interest while working for an intelligence agency, and then continues this interest right up until now. Like my co-blogger, Keith Basterfield, both their UFO interests span 40 years, and anyone who has survived an interest in any field for so long, has some standing in my mind.

I recall that Jacques Vallee in one of his diaries mentions Kit Green a number of times, so I thought it might be good to return to the earlier era of the 1970's to see what Jacques Vallee records about Green and his interest at that time. I think I will provide extensive quotes in order that we can get a good idea of those times. Another reason I want to provide this information, is that while conducting a reasonably complete search of internet sources about Green over the last few days, I have never seen anyone citing this information of Vallee's. So, I will put it on the record.

"Dr Green wasted no time in getting into our first topic of conversation, the Pascagoula case. He knew more about it than the "experts" who had claimed to analyze it. Hynek had interviewed both witnesses with Jim Harder, who made a big show of hypnotizing them. But Dr Green told me that a fortnight after the supposed abduction two other men fishing from a boat in the same river had seen an oblong, torpedo-like craft in the water. It was about one metre long and emitted a cone of light. They touched it with an oar. The light went off, and then came back, suggesting inner control.The coast Guard was called up and confirmed the observation, after which everybody was debriefed by Naval Intelligence and all hell broke loose. Green was alerted by the Navy. 'Nobody has pointed out that Pascagoula is a strategic site,' he said, 'it's the place where most of the U.S. nuclear subs are built. So the Navy surmised the object was a Soviet spying device. But why did it have a light, if it was designed to spy? Furthermore it's difficult to make a robot device that swims under water."

"We went on to discuss computer catalogues. But when I asked if they had any data about the lead mask case in Brazil he had never heard about it. The most important thing I learned was that Green has counterparts in every branch of the Executive. Like Howell McConnell, they mainly operated "out of personal interest," with the blessing of higher-level managers. They occasionally exchanged data, but he claimed little was done with it.

"In my case, I have a perfect excuse for doing this, out of my office at the Central Intelligence Agency:If there are Aliens around, dead or alive, they come under the mission of my group, which is biological intelligence. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't keep my mind open to this possibility."

"Are you involved in longer-term research, looking for patterns?"

"Not the agency. Not until there's clear proof that the problem is real. My bosses have read the same reports you have. They've even read your books, but they simply have never been scared by the problem to the point of setting up a serious project."

"I pushed him a little more: 'Don't you agree there must be a secret effort somewhere?'

"He thought about it for a while. 'Yes,' he finally said, 'I do agree with that statement. In my group we've wondered if it wasn't being run within private industry.'"

Comments:

1.For more on the Pascagoula case click here. There is no mention of the sighting related by Green. However there are some details on another site (click here) which fits in with Green's comments.

2. I was drawn to the comment: In my case, I have a perfect excuse for doing this, out of my office at the Central Intelligence Agency.If there are Aliens around, dead or alive, they come under the mission of my group, which is biological intelligence. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't keep my mind open to this possibility." My reading of this is that perhaps Green had a pre-existing interest in the topic and was able to use resources at his CIA job to further his private interests.

26 February 1974:

"A temporary clearance is being set up to enable me to visit Kit next month in hopes to better understand the chessboard."

18 May 1974:

Vallee visited the NSA."On the way back I met with Kit at the Dulles airport restaurant. His team remains interested in tracking down rumours but long-term research is simply not their mission, he said in response to my tirades stressing the urgency for science work. If they stumbled on hard evidence, of course they would pursue it and bring their analytical expertise upon it, but he confessed that's unlikely to happen.

"'Damm it,'he told me, 'I've got my people looking deep within the Air Force and we can't find anybody who'll talk to us! I've spent three days with Winebrenner, and brought up the subject as part of our work. He swore to me that FTD wasn't doing anything on UFOs any more. He said they had neither hardware or biological data.'...'The Air Force has unfocused objectives,' Kit went on. 'They have a shortage of scientific brains and they are weakened by the fact that their personnel rotates every two years. So where do they hide the fucking project, if there's one?'"

Comments:

1. Elsewhere in his book Vallee mentions that Colonel "Winebrenner, the new commander at the Foreign Technology Division..." (p.67.)

2. Winebrenner is also mentioned at:http://www.nicap.org/bluebook/51-69.htm

2 June 1974:

"...we got a call from Hal. He didn't want to talk over the phone, so I invited him over for coffee. "I don't know why Kit hasn't called you himself, except that technically the line of communication goes through me," he began. "He thinks you ought to know there's a group of 12 highly placed people in the Government who've decided to create a focus for the study of UFOs, with full access and funding for researchers like you. One of these people is at the deputy secretary level. He agrees with you that Hynek should be invited.""

Thursday, January 6, 2011

I love Summer in Adelaide. It also helps not to be at work at the moment, being on a vacation break. Lazy mornings enjoying the coolness of the day; lazy, long salad based lunches and a glass of awesome South Australian wine; and lazy afternoons lying on the lounge in the air-conditioning reading a good book and undertaking some research on the net.Enough of that, and on to today's post.

Yesterday's post, on someone I read about in the book "Mirage Men," namely Christopher (Kit) Green, who worked in the CIA between 1969 and 1985, led me to conduct some more research overnight. I looked for other interviews he may have given. I found one from July 2008.

The interview:

The introduction to the interview states:

"Dr Christopher C Green, known to friends and colleagues as "Kit," currently serves as the Assistant Dean of Clinical Research, China for the Wayne State School of Medicine, in Detroit Michigan. He served in the CIA from 1969 through 1985. In the early 1970's, Dr Green's work included involvement in the start of the 20-year government research project into ESP and psychic ability." Click here to see current faculty directory with a Christopher Green listed.)

I'd like to quote Green's own words from the interview:

"I was an "open" employee and able to generally discuss this question for my entire career. My position was as an analyst in the Life Sciences Division, later to become a Science and technology Division, in the part of the agency that examined intelligence data that may affect national security. Most of the data was unclassified. What analyst's "did" was called "All source" intelligence...My primary responsibility was in Physiology and Medicine, life support systems for foreign space and underseas platforms, and a wide range of biological and chemical threat analysis. My speciality was Forensic Medicine; this means trying to figure out diagnoses from very little and often highly incomplete data."

Green estimated that "Overall, I never spent more than 10% of my time on the subjects across any given period of weeks or a month..."

The rest of the interview dealt with the CIA's remote viewing research and not UFOs apart from:

"LTK: Have your views regarding phenomenon such as UFOs, ghosts or ESP changes at all from the time you started with the CIA to the day you left in 1985? If so why?

"CG: Yes. I now believe the phenomenon is much less common that I used to think."

Apart from the above article I came across a reference to this in a book.

"On June 27, 1972 Puthoff wrote concerning the magnetometer experiment to CIA scientist Kit Green, who occupied the Life Science Desk in the agency's Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI), starting a long-term relationship with one of the most important figures in the CIA to support the SRI remote viewing program." (Smith, P.H.2005. "Reading the Enemy's Mind." Tom Doherty Associates. New York. ISBN 0-312-87515-0 page 64.)Click here for Smith's website.

Bruce Maccabee:

UFOlogist Bruce Maccabee investigated the New Zealand UFO sightings of December 1978. It is reported that Maccabee met with Kit Green at the CIA in 1979 when he briefed a number of CIA personnel on the New Zealand events. (Source: click here.)

Vallee:

I seem to recall that the diaries of Jacques Vallee contain some entries about Kit Green. I will dig out my copy of Vallee's book and report.

Comment:

Green seems to have retained his interest in UFOs since his CIA days in the 70's and 80's. Have any readers information on what he was doing between 1985 and 2008? I'd appreciate anything you have.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

In yesterday's post, I briefly mentioned, in passing, Christopher (Kit) Green, in a quote from Jacques Vallee from the year 1977.

Coincidences:

Life is full of coincidences, as another book from my pile by my bed, "Mirage Men" features an interview with Kit Green in 2009!

The book is titled "Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs," by Mark Pilkington. It was published by Constable of London in 2010. The ISBN number is 978-1-84529-857-9. There are numerous interesting stories and characters described in the book including one with American Kit Green.

Pilkington says "Kit Green is a formidable, immediately likable character...He's also fascinated by UFOs, an interest that goes back some three decades to his time as the CIA's 'keeper of the weird' at the Office for Science and Technology. Really he was a senior science analyst, but a small part of his work involved intelligence to do with remote viewing (RV,) UFOs and other hot paranormal topics of the 1970s." (p.277.)

"Kit, John and I spoke for some hours, initially about the Serpo material, which, to our surprise, Kit took more seriously than we had expected. 'There are certain facts in there,' he told us, 'certain references, that prevent me from being able to reject the material out of hand, even if the story that it's telling is patently not true.' The Serpo material, or at least some of it, Kit suggested, might have served a purpose to someone, somewhere, perhaps conveying information in heavily codified form. One of the ways you can assess the value of information is to watch who is drawn to it, and Serpo had caught the attention of some senior players in the defence intelligence field..." (p.278.)

An aside:

The Serpo material was reported to have been initially released by an anonymous informant, in November 2005 to Victor Martinez, in the USA. Over time, by 2008, some of the contents of the alleged DIA report were released to the Internet.

It is said to provide the history of ETs interacting with the Earth and the subsequent visit by a team of humans to Serpo, a planet in the Zeta Reticuli star system. (Mirage Men pp48-50.)

Whether or not the Serpo material had any validity at all was hotly debated by part of the online UFO research community. It was however, widely seen to be a hoax.

Rick Doty:

"Kit is also a close and long-standing friend of Rick Doty, who he talked about with unguarded warmth and respect, though he was forced to admit that sometimes Rick's actions could be both puzzling and frustrating." (p.278.)

"We talked about the use of quiet helicopters 'disguised' as UFOs to probe security and nuclear installations. 'I'm pretty sure that it happened' said Kit, following up by hinting that he may have met a man who claimed to have flown similar missions." (p.278.)

"...at a Denny's restaurant back in 1986 he, along with physicist Hal Puthoff and computer scientist and ufologist Jacques Vallee, distilled what they knew about the subject into what has become known as the 'core story.' Simply put, the core story, according to Kit, is this: "The ETs came here, maybe once, maybe a few times. Either through accident or design, the US Government acquired one of their craft. The only problem was that the physics that powered the craft were so advanced that for decades we humans have struggled to understand it or to replicate it." (p.279.)

"This man was serious. And, as he sees it, so is the situation. We are not alone and probably never have been. They may even be here now. The problem is, what are we supposed to do about it?" (p.280.)

An aside:The 'core story':

One site which provides discussion of the 'core story' is (click here.)

Hypothesis:

Kit then put forward an hypothesis which involved "If something really strange in the area of UFOs is true, then what do we do about conveying that information to the public? First we concede what may be the basic facts: maybe there are civilized lifeforms elsewhere in the universe; maybe they visited us in their spaceships a couple of times, and then went back home...And there may be people in the Government who believe that this did happen, and believe that the information needs to be public knowledge...But then there's another group of people in power who say, 'No, it will make them sick to know all this, we can't let the story out, it's too dangerous." (p.281.)

Kit continued the hypothesis. "The way to do it is to construct a framework whereby they can parse out the things they've heard that are not true, and you whittle it down to a manageable story. A story like this. ' There were three spaceships that came here over thirty years, and we've got one of them. We can't figure out how it works, we've crashed it because..." (pp281-282.)

The hypothesis continues, that you feed stories out "Over ten or twenty years. You put out a bunch of movies, a bunch of books...Then one day you say, "Hey, all that stuff is nonsense, relax, it's not that bad...the reality is this..." (p.282.)

"Here was a very suave, very intelligent man, a man who had been close to the secret machinations of government than anyone we were ever likely to meet. And he appeared to be telling us that the aliens were real..." (p.283.)

Comment:

The interview with Green is pretty heady stuff, I'll conduct a bit more research and post further on Green.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Long-term readers of this blog will be aware of my fascination with intelligence agencies and their involvement in the UFO phenomenon.

I have posted on Jacques Vallee's interaction with the NSA and CIA in the 1970's (click here); Richard M Dolan's observations on the CIA, NSA and DIA (click here); FOI documents located by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood (click here); and pointed out that you can read UFO documents held by the NSA, CIA and DIA on their own websites (e.g. click here). Lately, Mark Pilkington's book "Mirage men" covers, both a lot of history plus recent interviews with people who were in the intelligence field.

Here, in Australia, the Disclosure Australia Project, following Bill Chalker's pioneering work, interviewed the Department of Defence's own internal intelligence area expert on the UFO phenomenon (click here.)

Lastly, the recent release of the New Zealand Defence Force's UFO files revealed that it was their Defence Intelligence area which co-ordinated the New Zealand Unidentified Flying Object Investigating Committee (click here.)

Curveball:

In today's post I'd like to present a cautionary tale from a 2007 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Bob Drogin, titled "Curveball" and published by Edbury Press, New York. ISBN 978-0091-9230-20. My copy from Adelaide Booksellers off the shelf.

It is not a book about UFOs but after my notes on the book, I will draw some lessons to be learnt, by the UFO research community.

1999:

In November 1999, Iraqi Ahmed Hassan Mohammed (a pseudonym) arrived in Munich, Germany and came to the attention of the Bundesenachrichtendienst (BND) (click here , Germany's intelligence service. Ahmed told the BND tales of his involvement in Iraq's germ warfare program, and included "Saddam was using German-manufactured equipment to build his WMD..." (p.28.)

The BND sent reports on Ahmen to the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) (click here)(p.32.) Ahmed as a source was given the code name "Curveball."

The BND initially refused to allow the DIA to interview "Curveball" (p.36) but shared information "His hands-on accounts, rich with vivid details, provided a crucial missing piece of the WMD puzzle. German intelligence shared their debriefing reports with their closest partners: U.S., British and Israeli spy services." (p.49.)

Distribution:

Gradually, the distribution of "Curveball's" information widened to include the CIA, via DIA HQ. However, what was being received by the CIA was BND summaries of Ahmed's Arabic, in German, which was then translated into English and summarised again. (p.66.)

Among Ahmed's claims was the existence of mobile germ warfare laboratories. As late as September 2002 "Not one CIA operations officer had debriefed the defector." (p.109.)

Ahmed's information continued to be passed upwards. "A National Intelligence Estimate represents the best collective judgement of the entire intelligence community...For the first time, biological weapons took the lead. The section labelled "Biological Warfare Program-Larger than Before" contained the NIE's most assertive and alarming language.And virtually every paragraph derived from Curveball's information." (p.126.)

Britain:

A British Government Joint Intelligence Committee report included "A year later, they cautioned that "our picture of Iraq's BW programme is unclear" other than "good intelligence on one facility that could be used to support BW production," meaning Curveball's worksite..." (p.128.)

Despite internal misgivings as to the fact that the "BND cannot vouch for the validity of the information" (p.142) from Curveball, on 28 January 2003 President Bush stated "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990's had several mobile weapon labs..." (p142.) "Curveball was "the other tangible source." None of the others had actually seen the mobile bioweapons lab. They had just heard about them. (p.144.)

On 5 February 2003 US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, addressed the United Nations Security Council, speaking out against Iraq. "Powell used the estimate (the NIE) as the foundation for his Security Council address" (p.153.) Powell's speech included the case for mobile weapons labs, "Virtually every word from Powell now was coming from Curveball..." (p.157.)

The UN's inspection team in Iraq (UNMOVIC) on 8 Feb 2003 started to check locations in Iraq mentioned by Curveball, including Djerf al Nadaf "...the complex where Curveball worked." (p.168.)

The UN team found no evidence to support the claim of mobile weapons labs.

"In late July, three deep-cover operatives...drove out of Slayer to search fro Curveball's parents." (p.229.)What they learned sent them off to the BND. An examination of Curveball's Iraqi academic record did not support his claim to have graduated first in his class (p.239.) "On other days, the bio-team pored over the defector's official government employment records...supervisors at the Chemical Engineering and Design Center had fired the young engineer in late 1995 for unspecified...offences...(pp 239-240.)

In short, Curveball's claims could not be supported.Later,it was found that "...all three of Curveball's supposed corroborating sources had lied." (p.245.)

"...Curveball was a liar, a con man, an out-and-out fabricator..." (p.277.)

Comment:

I have spent so much time above, in relating the account of this major intelligence failure for a purpose. It shows human nature at its worst. Intelligent people wanted to believe Curveball's account, so interpreted the evidence to support their belief, rather than the other way around.

In the UFO field, UFO cases are often presented in abstract form, rather than producing all the raw data for people to examine themselves. This is the case in many of the "crashed UFO" stories which have been circulating (see my previous posts here and here.)

Mundrabilla:

As an Australian example, take a look at the 1988 Mundrabilla, Australia, "UFO car encounter" case. (Click here for an example of the legend.)

Most wesbites, books and magazines suggest that the case is a classic example of a UFO picking up a car and dropping it and its occupants back onto the road. However, my co-blogger, Keith Basterfield led a team in a detailed investigation of this case and published a document via the US Based Fund for UFO Research (click here) which, when carefully read, suggested that the event was, in fact, a series of events which could be re-constructed as having no UFO connection at all. However today the Mundrabilla "legend" lives on and will probably continue to do so.

My point with this post is to suggest that when faced with a UFO event, you need to demonstrate that your data comes from original on-site investigations, original interviews with the witnesses and an analysis which takes into account all of, and not just part of, the data. This doesn't always happen and too often the source of the account is an anonymous one, or a document which is no longer widely available.

Final comment from Drogin:

"Declaring Curveball a fabricator in the end was a cop-out for the CIA. It implied that U.S. Intelligence had fallen for a clever hoax. The truth was more disturbing. The defector didn't con the spies, as much as they conned themselves." (p.281.)

Final comment from me:

I'll close with a very relevant quote from paranormal researcher, Jacques Vallee, from a diary entry dated 20 March 1977. The reference to "Kit" is to Christopher (Kit) Green, a former CIA analyst with an interest in UFOs and the paranormal. Kit and Vallee met a number of times in the 1970's.

"I am unimpressed by people with secret clearances. UFOs and psychic phenomena are best studied in the field, not in the secrecy of Washington circles. Kit's colleagues make mistakes like everyone else. In fact they are probably easier to fool, compartmentalised as they are. They can even fool themselves." (Vallee, J. Forbidden Science Volume 2. Documatica Research, LLC. 2008. ISBN 978-0-615-24974-2.)